More Product, Less Process

"More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing" is an influential 2005 archival science article written by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner that first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of The American Archivist. In the article, the authors argue that traditional archival processing is too slow and advocate for the use of minimal processing in order to reduce backlogs and provide access to archival collections as quickly as possible.

Article summary

Greene and Meissner begin the article with a call to action, citing the recent British report Best Value and Local Authority Archives, which asserted that archival cataloging (along with arrangement and description) "is not working". They further assert that growing backlogs present more than just a rising challenge, but are actually "weakening the archival profession". Greene and Meissner then note that they are beginning with the working hypothesis that "processing projects squander scarce resources", and that it is thus necessary to entirely reframe the discussion about processing instead of just simply suggesting a new processing technique. The authors' methodology included a literature review, an overview of National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grants, two surveys, and examination of other relevant studies.

Greene and Meissner then delve into a discussion of what they perceive to be problems with processing, citing a 1998 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) survey of special collections units that found that nearly a third of manuscript collections made up uncataloged backlogs. The authors propose a new set of guidelines for arrangement, preservation, and description:

1. Expediting the availability of collections to users;
2. Assuring adequate arrangement of materials for users' needs;
3. Taking the minimum steps necessary for physically preserving collection materials;
4. Describing materials sufficiently for use.

Greene and Meissner argue that arrangement at the item level is not necessary, citing for support an American Archivist article by Helen Slotkin and Karen Lynch, Northeastern University's processing manual, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's processing manual, and the National Archives and Records Administration's Technical Information Paper Number 6 (1990), Preservation of Archival Records: Holdings. The authors then discuss the rate at which archivists are able to process collections, citing a 1982 study by Karen Temple Lynch and Thomas E. Lynch that put the figure at 12.7 hours per cubic foot. Further citing a study by the Billy Graham Center Archives that found the cost of processing as high as 15.1 hours and $374 per foot, Greene and Meissner lamented that with regard to processing, archivists "have utterly failed to come to grips with a critical administrative reality, a reality that eats 90 percent of our direct program expenditures".

The authors propose five major findings from their research:

1. Arrangement was still often at the item level;
2. Only 51% of repositories were regularly putting finding aids online;
3. While most repositories have some preservation considerations, very few do it consistently;
4. Repositories were not responding to the challenges presented by backlogs;
5. Many of the repositories store their collections in appropriate temperature and relative humidity conditions, but still feel the need to remove metal fasteners (which the authors argue is unnecessary).

Recognizing that tradeoffs must be made, Greene and Meissner argue that some preservation concerns must be given up for the sake of providing effective access to users of collections. They then present their "principles for change" as recommendations for archivists:

• The Golden Minimum (“the least we can do to get the job done in a way that is adequate to user needs, now and in the future”)
• Arrangement (“research is much more effectively enabled by performing arrangement work at the series level than it is by shuffling around items within folders, or even folders within a file”)
• Description (“the point of good description is to both reflect and explain the intellectual arrangements of the materials”)
• Preservation (archivists "will rely on our storage area environmental controls to carry the preservation burden”)
• Policies (“Unprocessed collections should be presumed open to researchers. Period.”)
• Metrics (“for every given unit of archival collection materials, arrangement, description, and conservation work should all occur at the same hierarchical level”)

In conclusion, Greene and Meissner argue that because greater funding and resources are not forthcoming, the only solution for archivists is to "change the way we process so that we can, with our existing resources, roughly triple the speed with which we process". Recognizing that the needed changes will not be easy, the authors take heart in the fact that librarians will also be facing similar issues and that innovative work in processing was being done at institutions as diverse as Arizona State University, Yale University, Marquette University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Montana, and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Influence

The minimal processing approach advocated by "More Product, Less Process" has been implemented by many archives and libraries, including the Library of Congress, the University of North Carolina's Wilson Library, and the Academic Health Center Archives at the University of Minnesota. Greene and Meissner's article has been highly influential within the archival community, and it has inspired a whole series of presentations, seminars, workshops, and webinars on minimal processing. The article has also inspired the name of "More Podcast, Less Process", an archives-related podcast hosted by Jefferson Bailey of the Metropolitan New York Library Council and Joshua Ranger of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions.

Greene and Meissner have continued to expand their original thesis, notably in a 2010 Journal of Archival Organization article that amplifies their resource allocation argument and directly rebuts a variety of critics.